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Boaz Vaadia: Sculpture

ESSAY BY WENDY STEINER FOREWORD BY TOM MORAN

GROUNDS FOR SCULPTURE T H E A R T I S T B O O K F O U N D AT I O N NEW YORK

NORTH ADAMS

LONDON

Contents

Acknowledgments 9 BOAZ VAADIA

Foreword 11 TOM MORAN, CHIEF CURATOR, GROUNDS FOR SCULPTURE

Boaz Vaadia: Grounds For Sculpture 15 WENDY STEINER

Director’s Acknowledgments 37 GARY GARRIDO SCHNEIDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GROUNDS FOR SCULPTURE

Plates 41 Early Works, 1971–1985 43 Works in Stone, Slate, and Bronze, 1985–2015 73 Bas-relief Works, 2014 to the Present 111 Exhibition Checklist 117 Brief Biography 120 Selected Solo Exhibitions 121 Selected Group Exhibitions 123 Outdoor Installations and Public Art 127 Selected Collections 130 Grants, Fellowships, and Awards 132 Selected Bibliography 133 Photograph Credits 134

Acknowledgments

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK the following people for their contributions and help with the produc-

tion and organization of this major exhibition. I am very grateful to have worked with Gary

Garrido Schneider and all the staff at Grounds For Sculpture who made this show possible. Special thanks to Tom Moran; together we collaborated seamlessly to produce this show, and to Faith McClellan who provided the necessary organization. I would also like to thank Wendy

Steiner for lending her words to this catalogue with her insightful essay. Thanks also to Jennifer

Lewis for working with me so tirelessly on so many aspects of this show, and to Harry Gordon for his care in the shipping and installation of this extensive body of work.

My deepest gratitude is extended to Ivan Karp for his integrity, honesty, and support, and

for launching my career. I feel I was very lucky to work with a dealer of his caliber.

It is with great pride that I am happy to acknowledge the support and generosity of the

Consulate General of Israel in New York for their contribution to this catalogue as well as their

promotion of Israeli culture. As well, I’d like to recognize the Connaught Brown gallery, which

has, in the last decade, increased the presence of my work internationally. And my thanks to Sponder Gallery, Imago Galleries, Jim Kempner Fine Art, and Vered Gallery for their generous support for this publication.

In addition, I would like to thank all of my family and friends for being there for me; all of

the art dealers and galleries that have shown my work and supported me throughout the years;

all of the public and private collectors who have invested in me throughout my career; all of the foundries I work with for casting my bronze sculptures; all of the people at The Artist Book Foundation who helped with the publication of the catalogue; and my assistants Vincent Tiley and Dax Sommerfeld, as well as all of my past assistants for their help.

Lastly, to the love of my life Kim, my real rock; and to the sunshine of my life, my daugh-

ters Rebecca and Sara who kindly leant their collection to this exhibition. Installation at Main Museum Gallery, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 2016.

BOAZ VAADIA WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK MAY 2016

Boaz Vaadia: Sculpture Foreword

BOAZ VAADIA arrived in SoHo in the excitement of the 1970s. Artists were building their loft studios and the galleries that would eventually show their work became plentiful over time. The international boutiques and design stores had not yet arrived. Trucks hit the big potholes on the

overburdened cross streets with a loud bang. New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy. Vaadia found a place to live and work and, like many artists, raided dumpsters for his material.

Boaz’s early exhibitions consisted of works made primarily from the materials he found.

He transformed such finds into distinctive artworks comprised of wood, bone, hair, and other mixed mediums; they were ritualistic in manner and resembled highly personal ex-votos. He

assembled sculptures made of branches stripped of their bark and bound together with rope

or leather. In some of these works, he found resourceful ways to suspend a large stone serving as an integral compositional element. He used the weight of the stone to provide the necessary gravitational force that would allow the piece to stand. Recognizing the physical truths

revealed in the process of making this body of work, Vaadia moved toward deeper explorations of three-dimensional concepts and focused on his interest in structure, balance, and gravity.

Boaz Vaadia: Sculpture celebrates his art and his important contribution to the advancement

of sculpture over a long and prolific career. All stages of the artist’s work since the 1970s appear

in this extensive exhibition, which includes more than 125 of his pieces installed in two major buildings. The exhibition as a whole amplifies the critical understanding of Vaadia’s career, and coincidentally, traces a pathway from abstraction to figuration. However, neither was ever the

main point. The limitations he imposed upon himself instead concerned the natural forces of

gravity and balance; a reliance on natural materials even after they had become part of a cityInstallation at Main Museum Gallery, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 2016.

scape; and, a sense of offering—of veneration. Seven of his bronze sculptures are on view out-

doors in the beautiful gardened landscape of Grounds For Sculpture. The exhibition includes many of the artist’s earliest works as well as his large bluestone sculptures and the bronzes he casts from them. On view along with the large bronze and stone sculptures are intimate

Boaz Vaadia: Grounds For Sculpture

BY WENDY STEINER

GROUNDS FOR SCULPTURE, a former industrial fairground in Hamilton, New Jersey, is the

site of the first retrospective survey of Boaz Vaadia’s career. It is a match made in heaven. The

Grounds are a twenty-first-century update of the scene in Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon

on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884): a leisure park nestled within the ferment of fast-forward, high-tech exurbia. Here, the most sophisticated sculptures seem as accessible as the tall grasses and trees of the gardens and the light-filled, human-scale architecture of the galleries. Exploring

Grounds For Sculpture by foot and by thought, we cannot help but marvel at the democratic case it makes for art.

Boaz Vaadia’s work could also be described as “grounds for sculpture.” Methodically, curi-

ously, humanely, he investigates the preconditions of his practice and its reason for being. We might picture him as Ahiam 2nd (plate 102), daydreaming against an ancient boulder on a bed of stony shards. The sedimentary strata that make up his feet and forearms lead down like

steps to the earth, showing the way back to their beginnings. Oblivious to heavy machinery and high technology alike, Ahiam 2nd lies lost in thought, a hand-wrought vision of repose.

The earliest grounds for his sculpture, Vaadia tells us, lay in his family’s farm in Israel.

“Simple and primal,” it inspired an enduring connection to the earth that demanded sacrifice and reverence on his part. “My father was a basic farmer. He thought that heavy equip-

ment was raping the land, and he used to plow with a mule.”1 Vaadia uses the word “rape” again when he speaks of the graffiti artists who spray the boulders he stores in a lot in the

Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The paint ruins the patina on the rocks, and it takes years for the exquisite skins to return. Vaadia’s art making, in contrast, is an act of humility: “Your entire life is only a second in the lifetime of a stone formation. So I have that Wall installation at Main Museum Gallery, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 2016.

respect for the materials I work with; I have respect for nature, natural forces, and for what I learn from the processes [I use].”2

In Israel, Vaadia grew up surrounded by ancient architecture and sculpture. During breaks

in his military service, he worked on an archaeological restoration team, learning stoneworking

FIG.1. Photograph of The Left Pillar in the Porch of the Temple, 1978. Stone, wood, rope, and soil, 108 x 147 x 32 in. (274.3 x 373.8 x 81.3 cm). Installation at The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, 1978.

techniques dating back to biblical times. He was moved by the crosses that pilgrims scratched

on stone shrines. Unlike graffiti, these marks seemed to him a positive offering, the human equivalent of weathering. They taught him that artworks grew and changed through inter-

action with their viewers, developing like living things, but in slow motion. An artist formed them, but viewers brought out their beauty and aura. Holiness, Vaadia claims, is the energy people bring to what they revere.

For his 13th birthday, Vaadia asked his parents for an African fetish, and they found him

one. Later, caring for his mother in her final illness, he imagined creating fetishes to house her

spirit and the spirits of his departed grandparents. He decided that his sculptures would be “sites that encourage veneration.”3 He began with the elemental materials on the farm—sticks,

stones, leather, fur, feathers, string, rope, sand, human hair—tying and wrapping them into form. In the presence of these aesthetic fetishes, altars, and shrines, he says, people would

experience “something beyond themselves.”4 Even the welded industrial parts of his earliest

piece, Untitled, 1971 (plate 1), are filled with a pent-up energy, the sphere almost popping out

of its constraining pipes. This and the other works in the exhibition that were made between 1971 and 1975 slept for more than forty years in the family barn, numinous artifacts waiting to be wakened to life by viewers.

Attending art school in Israel, Vaadia acquired another ground for his work: twentieth-cen-

tury sculpture. The use of fur and the technique of wrapping recall Meret Oppenheim’s surre-

alist teacup. The stone, aluminum, and iron penis and testicles of Untitled, 1973 (plate 2), drooping over a forked stick suggest Dalíesque dreamscapes, and there is a whiff of Arte

Povera in Vaadia’s assemblages of humble materials. But his thinking differs from those artists: he uses these materials to discover the rules and limits they impose on his practice.

Vaadia’s severe dyslexia had already taught him a lot about limits.5 Unable to read about

art, he says, he was free to feel it deeply and he consciously defined himself through this accident of his cognitive makeup. In 1978, The Jewish Museum of New York selected one of his

pieces for a group show: a massive slab of curbstone pitched at a precarious angle over stony rubble. The slab was held back from falling—indeed, held back from any motion but this ominous leaning—by a framework of restricting poles and ropes. Although Vaadia had previously labeled all his works Untitled, the museum insisted on a descriptive title, and he sent them one: The Left Pillar in the Porch of the Temple (fig. 1). It was a private joke: in the Bible, that pillar’s

name is “Boaz.” In effect, Vaadia had made a self-portrait, and this “portrait of the artist as a young man” was an image of tense restriction.

Still, limitation was not a misfortune, as he saw it. The artists Vaadia most admired—

Alberto Giacometti and Isamu Noguchi—accepted the rules imposed by time, gravity, and

the characteristics of their materials. “Finding ways to work within those parameters,” Vaadia states, is “what eventually shapes each individual artist’s work. So you can call them ‘bound-

aries’ or you can call them ‘limitations.’ But that is the scope within which we work.”6 For

Vaadia, limits are defining grounds for artistic creativity, freedom, and self-realization.

This idea was at work in his first U.S. solo exhibition, held at Hundred Acres Gallery in

1976 (fig. 2). The abstract pieces in this show (Untitled, 1976, plates 28 and 29) caged massive

stones in structures of poles lashed together with leather thongs. “Caged,” however, is too negative a term. The scaffoldings support the stones and frame them, or raise them up to dis-

play their numinous beauty. Vaadia sometimes incised marks on the stone, like the pilgrims’ scratchings he had seen in Israel’s holy sites.

Installation at Hundred Acres Gallery, New York, NY, 1976.

FIG.2.

In a 1979 group show in Washington, DC, called Other Gods: Containers of Belief,7 critics

responded to his works as fetishes. Julia Keydel registered the power of this sculpture, which engages us on the level of elemental awareness: “Shaped by Vaadia [the materials] evoke…the earliest expressions of human beings—ceremonial objects, tools, and rudimentary structures. Particularly striking about Vaadia’s current work is the directness with which these pieces

communicate a sense of involvement with primal forces without demanding initiation into a private magical ritual for complete understanding.”8

Vaadia landed in the ferment of New York City in 1975 with a scholarship from the

America-Israel Cultural Foundation. Hundreds of artists were converting abandoned warehouses into studio lofts, and the sidewalks were torn up, with broken pavement piled at every

corner—bluestone slabs in subtle shades of gray, blue, green, purple, and brown. Dumpsters overflowed with broken roofing slates and cedar poles, the discarded props for the saplings the

city had been planting. A postmodern bricoleur, Vaadia scavenged through SoHo, discovering in the process the materials that would determine his practice ever after.

For this reason, Grant Moser, a writer on the arts, has labeled Vaadia a “Sculptor of

Coincidence.”9 But it is Vaadia’s attitude toward chance that sets him apart. He viewed SoHo as his urban farm, and accepted the grounds it provided for his sculpture. The paving stones

connected him to the earth’s primordial past: “The bluestone I work with is a remnant of an ancient [river delta]—layers of sediment, compressed by thousands of pounds of pressure over

millions of years—only to find its way into my studio.”10 But those stones, at the same time,

were human artifacts intended for paving. Similarly, the slates were shaped for roofing and the

poles for landscaping. Integral elements of the urban fabric, they had been unceremoniously torn out and abandoned, like the rubble in archeological sites in Israel that had been repeatedly

razed and buried. In hand-fashioning the gifts of his new farm, Vaadia set out to show his respect. He followed an aesthetic ecology in doing so, salvaging urban waste for art.

It took Vaadia a while to understand the limits imposed by these materials. Gravity lays

down sedimentary stone in layers, and the city of New York had delivered them up to him in

manageable chunks. He responded by standing the layers on end and bolting them together

as vertical parallels in his 1982 Untitled (plate 66). But soon it dawned on him that he was fighting gravity rather than respecting it. If he piled the layers one on top of the other, they

would convey both the process of sedimentary rock formation and twentieth-century geo-

metric abstraction. In fact, they would go on signifying their origins in stone and abstraction even if he stacked them into a shape that resembled something else entirely—something like a person, for example.

Now, Vaadia had a way of representing the human figure without turning his back on either

the nature of his material or the history of twentieth-century art: “I had tried to work with figures before, but it felt too derivative. Then, I saw that I could reinterpret the human figure in a way that hadn’t been done before. I surrendered to the stone.”11 Surrendering to the stone, Vaadia passed from abstraction to figuration. The year was 1985, and he never looked back.

He had a host of new limitations to explore. Bluestone forms in thicker layers than slate.

Accordingly, he would make figures in two scales: life-size for bluestone, pedestal-size for

Shemai’ah, 1985. Bluestone, 82 x 137 x 41 in. (208.5 x 348 x 104 cm). Private collection, New York.

FIG.3.

slate. Since gravity and the structure of stone are fatal for projecting limbs or precariously balanced masses, he would have to place his figures in compressed, stable poses. Finally, layers interfere with surface detail, and so his sculpture would represent not so much a person as “a

person’s shadow,”12 the formal generalization of a human being. One of his artist friends, Gabi

Benzano, wrote that Vaadia was creating a “symmetrical dialogue between the slices of stone and the image of man.”13

Vaadia named his first figurative slate piece Adam (1985) after a guest who happened to be

staying in his loft. Shemai’ah (fig. 3), the first life-size figure in bluestone, was named for another

visitor. The titles were just a convenience, he claims—a way to distinguish one piece from another. The fact that they all came from the Old Testament was an accident: his visitors were

usually Israelis, after all. However, “once someone pointed out the trend—I decided it was a good direction to go, so I now give Hebrew names to all my pieces…. I would finish a piece and name it after someone I knew, like a workman or a relative.”14

Boaz Vaadia

Early Works, 1971–1985

IN 1971, Boaz Vaadia graduated from the Avni Institute of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv. Staying on to

teach there and already familiar with welding steel, Vaadia built a foundry from scratch so that he could learn how to cast his works in bronze. Early bronze works from this period, including

a work in steel, are represented in this plate section. By 1972, Vaadia introduced stone into his works and eventually added human hair in his exploration of the subject of death. By 1973, he

began exploring surrealist influences by creating dripping shapes in metal and stone in addition to using sheep hides, branches, and leather in his work.

When he moved to SoHo in New York City in 1975, Vaadia met Ivan Karp, the legendary

gallerist who would later become his dealer. His first major solo show of his early works produced in New York took place at Hundred Acres Gallery. Ritualistic in nature and inspired

by African fetishes, altars, and ancient tools, Vaadia created the works in the exhibition from material he had found around SoHo.

By 1976, Vaadia began his work with sedimentary stone such as bluestone and slate, which

he had found discarded in SoHo. With these works, he began important explorations using the natural force of gravity. Binding cedar poles together in various structures that held large stones, Vaadia found ways to use gravity in the creation of compelling sculptures that would inform and preoccupy him in his future explorations in sculpture.

Boaz Vaadia with Untitled, 1977.

left to right

Untitled, 1971. Painted steel, 14 x 121/2 x 48 in. (35.6 x 31.7 x 121.9 cm).

PLATE 1.

Untitled, 1973. Stone, aluminum, and iron, 281/2 x 10 x 13 in. (72.4 x 25.4 x 33 cm).

PLATE 2.

clockwise from top left

Untitled, 1973. Bronze and stone, 53/4 x 63/4 x 4 in. (14.6 x 17.1 x 10.2 cm). Edition of 7.

PLATE 3.

Untitled, 1973. Bronze and stone, 51/2 x 61/2 x 5 in. (14 x 16.5 x 12.7 cm). Edition of 7.

PLATE 4.

Untitled, 1973. Bronze and stone, 71/2 x 41/4 x 41/4 in. (19.1 x 36.2 x 36.2 cm). Edition of 7.

PLATE 5.

Works in Stone, Slate, and Bronze, 1985–2015

IN 1985, Boaz Vaadia began producing figurative works with stacked layers of slate and blue-

stone. This work began a long period of great creative success and recognition for him. He marshaled his extensive technical skills of stone carving, fabrication, and bronze casting to create

works that resonated all of the creative concerns he had explored in his early works. These later works, created from the stacked layers of sedimentary stone, reveal Vaadia’s focus on natural materials and natural physical forces such as gravity as central elements in the composition and construction of his sculptures.

His first exhibition of these works took place at OK Harris Works of Art with Ivan Karp

in SoHo. The entire exhibition sold out and marked the beginning of a long and meaningful

relationship between Vaadia and Karp. Numerous public and private collectors from around

the world have purchased or commissioned Vaadia’s works for their collections. They include

The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone, Japan; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, among many others.

Installation at Main Museum Gallery, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 2016.

Zur with Dog, 1989. Bronze and bluestone, 49 x 41 x 29 in. (124.5 x 104.1 x 73.7 cm). Edition of 5. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 80.

Milka & Tirza, 1990. Bronze, boulder, and bluestone, 41 x 47 x 24 in. (104.1 x 119.4 x 61 cm). Edition of 5. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 81.

Shimshon, 1998. Bronze, boulder, and bluestone, 80 x 34 x 29 in. (203.2 x 86.4 x 73.7 cm). Edition of 5. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 84.

Gilalay & Ginnetoy, 1998. Bronze, boulder, and bluestone, 38 x 100 x 60 in. (96.5 x 254 x 152.4 cm). Edition of 5. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 85.

Ba’al-zevuv, 1999. Bronze and bluestone, 44 x 35 x 35 in. (111.8 x 88.9 x 88.9 cm). Edition of 5. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia.

PLATE 87.

OPPOSITE

Ammi’el & Amaryahu, 1999. Bronze, boulder, and bluestone, 70 x 100 x 72 in. (177.8 x 254 x 182.9 cm). Edition of 5. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia.

PLATE 86.

ZAMIR, 2004. Bluestone, 50 x 49 x 29 in. (127 x 124.5 x 73.6 cm). Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 92.

Boaz, 2002. Slate and steel pedestal, 10 x 101/2 x 7 in. (25.4 x 26.7 x 17.8 cm). Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia.

PLATE 93.

Efrayim, 2003. Bronze, boulder, and bluestone, 14 x 29 x 23 in. (35.6 x 73.7 x 58.4 cm). Edition of 7. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 98.

Ge’u’el & Binyamin,, 2002.. Bronze, boulder, and bluestone, 23 x 28 x 28 in. (58.4 x 71.1 x 71.1 cm). Edition of 7. Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia and Sara Vaadia. PLATE 99.

Bas-relief Works, 2014 to the Present

BOAZ VAADIA has always sought to innovate with techniques and materials, new and old, in

the creation of new chapters in his work as a sculptor. Having worked on freestanding fig-

urative works in stone, slate, and bronze for more than three decades, Vaadia has recently turned to bas-relief, a timeless genre of sculpture that dates back to ancient Greek, Roman, and Assyrian art. In his bas-relief works, Vaadia carves the slate to depths that retain the image of

the natural contours of the figures in his compositions. However, one of the most distinguish-

ing characteristics of Vaadia’s reliefs is the use of layers of sedimentary stone that comprise the overall tableau. This exhibition debuts this new body of works. For the first time, we can

see that Vaadia’s use of layered stone brings a new innovation to an old medium. For Vaadia, these works point to a new direction and foreshadow intriguing possibilities that we all must patiently await.

Installation at Main Museum Gallery, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 2016.

111

First Edition © 2016 The Artist Book Foundation All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Convention. Except for legitimate excerpts customary in review or scholarly publications, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published in the United States by The Artist Book Foundation 115 East 57th Street, 11th floor, New York, New York 10022 Distributed in the United States, its territories and possessions, and Canada by ACC Distribution www.accdistribution.com/us Distributed outside North America by ACC Distribution www.accdistribution.com/uk Publisher and co-founder: L. Pell Co-founder: H. Gibbs Taylor, Jr. Production manager: David Skolkin Design: Irene Cole Editor: Deborah Thompson Proofreader: Marisa Crumb Printed and bound by Friesens Manufactured in Canada ISBN 978-0-9962007-4-5 Library Of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Steiner, Wendy, 1949- | Grounds For Sculpture, organizer, host institution. Title: Boaz Vaadia : sculpture / essay by Wendy Steiner ; foreword by Tom Moran. Other titles: Boaz Vaadia (Grounds For Sculpture) Description: First Edition. | New York : The Artist Book Foundation, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2016030989 | isbn 9780996200745 Subjects: LCSH: vaadia, boaz, 1951---exhibitions. Classification: LCC NB237.V25 A4 2016 | DDC 730.92--DC23 LC record available at https://lccn.Loc.Gov/2016030989

COVER: Horse (Relief), 2015. Slate, 14 x 19 x 31/4 in. (35.6 x 48.3 x 8.2 cm). Photograph by Adam Reich. PAGE 1: Zamir, 2004. Bluestone, 50 x 49 x 29 in. (127 x 124.5 x 73.7 cm). Private collection of Rebecca Vaadia

and Sara Vaadia. Photograph by Adam Reich. PAGES 2–3: Asaf and Yo’ah, 2000. Bluestone and boulder, 78 x 110 x 80 in. (198.1 x 279.4 x 203.2 cm).

Private collection. Permanent installation, Time Warner Center, South Tower, New York, NY. Photograph by Steven Greaves. PAGE 4: Natan Toviya and Havaqquq, 2013. Bluestone and boulder, 91 x 120 x 132 in. (231.1 x 124.5 x 335.3 cm).

Private collection. Photograph by Boaz Vaadia. PAGE 6: Installation at Main Museum Gallery, Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 2016.

Photograph by Ken Ek.

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